I'm reading the KJV of Genesis and am amazed by how amoral most of the characters are, including God. The only other book that comes to mind as I read it is The Odyssey. Most of the characters seem to be rewarded for being sly and clever rather than being good. Cain gets his mark, but anyone who kills him is cursed. Abraham deceives Pharaoh and Jacob deceives Esau. Are there any "good guys" in Genesis? The book seems mostly to be about self-preservation rather than good vs. evil. Am I reading Genesis the wrong way by looking for some sort of moral teaching in it?
Genesis / Old Testament General Thread
Talk to your priest.
>>7925863
I have no priest, faggot.
>>7925815
That is the old law. It is all resolved in the new testament.
Also remember that your morals are biased by 3000 years of ideology.
>>7925815
Cain is different from Noah's Hamitic son, right? The situation changes somewhat.
Abraham misrepresents his relationship with his sister... There's some suggestion that Sarah entered 'The House of Pharaoh' which could mean, not that they visited the temple, but that Sarah was pregnant with a child that entered the Royal line of Egypt circa 2100 B.C. This same scenario is played out again later among other tribes... It's almost as though Abraham is 'cattle-ranching' his wife in order to spread the seed as far as possible?
Jacob makes a deal with Esau, and then his mother tells him to dress as him.
Why is the God of the old testament so different from the new testament God?
Seems odd that God would ever change in such major ways.
>>7926020
Parenthood can mellow people out
>>7925815
>God
>immoral
Tip top kek.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob etc. are all cowards and liars, but for instance that is kind of the point of Abraham's story, to trust in God despite your flaws and fears.
Genesis is origin story for the tribe and its patriarchs. The only moral code i remember is the covenant, which they break and have to remake later and then i believe they do it all over again.
>>7926020
Maybe he had high expectations for us and we continually disappointed him, and were punished harshly. After God came down himself as a man (as JC) He could better relate and understand us.
>amoral
What is moral is God's will
>>7926020
>Books of Moses "G-d" =/= God
The Jewish "God" is the Demiurge or creator. In his arrogance he created matter, "it was very good" is an utterance of hubris. This world is an abortion, an abomination. The Demiurge is the "jealous God" that will kill thousands of children or torment people just because. He is a vicious and hateful thing and not the Christian God.
Jesus is the LORD. Jesus is God and goodness. He came to liberate us from the Demiurge. The old law was to be cast away, he preached the TRUE word of Christianity, bringing a catharsis in a way. The archon minions followed the Demiurge's "oral law", no way related to God's teaching. When Jesus came to abolish this disgrace they intrigued against him and then had him murdered. Ask yourself, why would they murder some carpenter if he wasn't really the son of God? he told us to be kind and to cast away the vanity of this world. They killed him. JESUS is the LORD. These words alone are enough to cast our enemies back into the darkness.
You will hear Jews claim that Jesus is bubbling in hell in a vat of shit. Or that the books of Moses are the only great Biblical books. Harold Bloom is one, in his laughable "the Book of J".
>>7926022
Oh, my.
>>7926052
>The old law was to be cast away
Fucking nope dude. That's straight up heresy.
>For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matthew 5:18)
>>7926052
What is this heresy called?
it actually is moral
The OT is about how evil the Hebrews were who were following the demiurge Yahweh. The NT is about how God defeats that evil tribal god using his son and how to actually be good
>>7926081
>don't change a dot!!
>circumcision no longer needed
>no foods are unclean
>salvation through faith not temple sacrifices
>god goes from unitarian to trinitarian
>divorce rules tightened
Yep not one dot was changed! Not one rule changed!!!
>inb4 arbitrary separation of moral and ceremonial laws ;^)
Cain is marked and he suffers for life. That's why no one can kill him.It stops his suffering. That's a pretty fucking cruel place to be.
Abraham protected his wife. That's not immoral.
Jacob decieving Esau? Esau got the better deal.
The whole OT is about how NOT to live. Read it with that in mind and you'll understand better.
Also when combined with the NT you come to understand how it WAS and now how it is better.
See God as creator who destroys his creation and then starting over only to realize it is incurably corrupted by giving us equality to Him with freewill. So, instead of ending humanity he decides to let us have a way out through forgiveness.
>>7926724
>implying god didn't know the exact consequences of freewill and how it necessarily fails in the hands of imperfect animals
>gee let me make beings who lack omniscience, lack omnibenevolence, andlack perfect wisdom and see where their animal instincts take them...
>ya im gonna make sex feel unreasonably amazing for them, why not
>what they are fucking and killing each other constantly?!!!!! They aren't bowing to my invisible presence day and night and willfully becoming my robots?!! Why I'll just kill them all!!! Arghh who could've foreseen such a thing, imperfect and ignorant beings acting imperfectly!!!!
>>7925815
Everybody in Genesis repeatedly disappoints God. The point of the OT is to demonstrate the strength of God's will. Despite his chosen people's choice to kill each or waste their seed like with Onan in your pic, God's will is still done. Abraham's covenant is eventually fulfilled through Joseph (the only likeable character in genesis) and from then on the narrative makes more sense.
Slave morality came out of NT Jesus. OT is just retards and muh wrath.
OP checking in. My duplicate thread on /his/ has about 250 replies of pure shitposts. I like what I see here better.
>>7926968
I finished the rest of Genesis and this post sums up most of my thoughts. Is Joseph considered to be the first prophet?
>>7925815
Yahweh is a complete and utter asshole.
Reminder, everybody in the bible, who ever lived, posting in this thread is God, only you are all playing hide and seek with yourself and have chosen to forget who you are in order to play the game
>>7927556
Abraham is the first prophet because with the exception of Adam, he's the first man to witness God. Joseph's story is fantastic though. It's got much more merit than just a religious tale. Very reminiscent of The Count of Monte Cristo.
Job is a good dude.
>>7926052
You keep using LORD as if that appears in the New Testament. "The LORD thy God" only appears in the Old Testament. LORD is all caps to remind us that the word actually used here is Yahweh, but is censored because Jews didn't say his name just in case they'd be using it in vain. Jehovah is another such censorship that was created through translation
>>7925815
>Am I reading Genesis the wrong way by looking for some sort of moral teaching in it?
No. You're just totally isolated from the culture, and so you don't grasp the moral logic.
Nobody can kill Cain, because if they did, he would be at rest, and no longer wandering.
The story with the angels, lot and sodom is about middle-eastern hospitality, and hating homosexuals.
The story with Abraham and Pharaoh is to show God's favor toward Abraham. God can kick Egyptian ass, and won't put up with anyone banging Abraham's wife, even the most powerful man in the world.
And the story about Joseph is clearly a morality tale. You couldn't have missed that one.
>>7927593
ssoooooooo what
>>7926020
The God of a nomadic herding culture would, naturally, represent different ideals than the God of a settled farming culture.
>>7928218
>The story with Abraham and Pharaoh is to show God's favor toward Abraham. God can kick Egyptian ass, and won't put up with anyone banging Abraham's wife, even the most powerful man in the world.
And also to expose Abraham as a coward and helpless weakling.
I think this is in a roundabout way prophetic of Christ, as he is pretty much the polar opposite, yet obedient in the same way.
Here's the important thing to note - so far as I can tell, the Old Testament features the oldest underdog stories ever told. God chooses an old barren couple through which to give birth to his chosen people. Later, Abraham's inheritance is given not to his firstborn grandson, but is stolen by the secondborn trickster Jacob. In Exodus, God shows his devotion to those on the underside of power by freeing a nation of slaves from Egypt, the most powerful empire of its time. In I Samuel, God anoints a lowly shepherd boy, the youngest of his family, to become the second king of Israel. And then of course there's the New Testament and the Jesus story (all written by Jews too), where you have a "son of God" and "king of Heaven" who was born in a barn, hangs out with the poor and the outcasts, and dies a humiliating criminal's death.
Basically, there is a throughline of this theme of subversion of earthly power structures all throughout the Scriptures, that often goes overlooked or underemphasized
>>7928286
>all written by Jews too
St. Luke was a gentile.
>>7925815
Give this a read op. Its worth consideration.
>>7928286
Liberation Theology pls go away
>>7927556
>Finished Genesis
>God straight calls Abraham a prophet in Genesis 20:7
sure OP
>I've read the entire bible 3 times, trust me
>>7926713
>arbitrary
Those "changes" aren't arbitrary.
Also, the covenants with the Jews never applied to gentiles and never will. Gentile Christians don't have to worry about them.
>>7926761
Have you ever thought that maybe it will all work out in the end?
>>7926761
>Hmm my second human, Eve totally disobeyed my command
>Cain, the first human actually born kills his younger brother
If God was a project manager he'd have been fired looong ago
>>7925912
if god knows anything that's happened at any period in human history, and what will happen, why would he make rules in the first testament so erronous to begin with
>>7928550
why would you be so quick to lay the error on God? From a theistic perspective I'd say human error is a far more likely option for why some things in the Old Testament are fucked-up and contradictory (i.e. God ordering warfare and genocide in the Books of History, and then staunchly condemning warfare and social injustice in the Prophets and the New Testament). from the looks of it, God's probably been saying the same kinda shit for a while, people just got a little better at listening during various influential points in history
>>7925881
i wonder if like all of these are staged
>>7928606
boy, they sure were bad at listening in the old testament. good thing jesus came around when they'd cleaned out their ears.
>>7928550
They don't have a real answer for that besides the bible being wrong or God being an asshole.
>>7928606
See this guy?
Classic example of how modern theists justify revision of their sacred texts.
You'd never hear a Muslim come out with this crap, because they "understand" that adopting the faith of your ancestors then changing it as to be nigh unrecognizable is "actual" blasphemy.
Ironically, in changing with the times they water down the very bedrock of their faith.
>>7928640
Interpretations change. The text doesn't.
>>7925815
now you understand why jews are so greedy and unscrupulous. their hero yakov was practically a thief and a deceiver
>>7928647
Wrong, the bible has been edited multiple times, the council of Nicaea is one such instance.
Also retroactively every character who practiced the faith as described in your own texts is "doing it wrong".
There is no continuation of actual tradition, just a ragged appropriation of a dead faith's texts.
>>7928606
Maybe we got worse at understanding God's point. Jesus was clearly a con artists riding off God's fame.
>>7928665
Tradition is nothing so long as the text remains. Now get out of here, Achmed.
>>7928667
Funnily enough, the bible itself says this will happen eventually.
It predicts the subversion of Christianity from within by the Antichrist.
What if Christ is the Antichrist?
What if Revelations already went down?
What if this is the garbage heap?
>>7928673
Well then, that means the only thing you have over Ron Hubbard is numbers.
>>7928680
Also, Ron Hubbard has a boat.
Actually, I think he's clearly winning here in terms of divine favour.
>>7928640
OR, mysticism and the perennial philosophy have existed as the core of religion and spirituality from the beginning, and fundamentalism and the obsession with doctrine and "inerrant" scriptures is only religion's crass and deluded shadow-side.
Also, the Jews have been interpreting and reinterpreting their laws and stories for thousands of years, and there are even books filled with even more stories that the Rabbis made up to illustrate a certain point or to fill in blanks in the narrative, like Bible fanfiction. Not every religion views their Scriptures as strictly as Islam.
>>7928218
>The story with the angels, lot and sodom is about middle-eastern hospitality, and hating homosexuals.
Huh. That's really obvious now that you mention it; no wonder they were all trying to get inside and see them. Does the word sodomize maybe come from that story?
>>7928676
Can you give me some more info on that (the first part)? Do you believe the dragon is the Catholic church?
>>7928640
Well, both testaments explain in some ways that God never wanted the Jews to become so violent, elitist, legalistic, and hypocritical. The Jews asked for the law because people prefer structure over abstract concepts like faith and love. Even with the prophets, the law was interpreted by men who wanted a dichotomy of righteous and sinful. The entire reason Jesus descends to earth us to show the Jews how God actually meant them to live.
"even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." - Gal 2:16
Before Jesus, man's relationship with God was based entirely on eisegesis. Jesus is the carnation of God, so his word is as close to pure exegesis as any man can get. YHWH and Jesus have the same doctrine, but Jesus comes as an example. His self-martyrdom demonstrates the return to YHWH's original covenant with Abraham.
